


This Is Your (Other) Backstory

by gloriousmonsters



Category: Phineas and Ferb, Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe Me Scares Me, Gen, Human Perry the Platypus (Phineas and Ferb), In Which Both Perrys Have Awful Backstories As Well, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships, there's backstory ALL OVER THE PLACE, what is this even I apologize in advance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 06:06:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13851666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloriousmonsters/pseuds/gloriousmonsters
Summary: Communication between the first and second dimensions remain open for a while so OWCA can help our their counterpart. Nobody's really recovered from what's happened. And, each for their own reasons, Perry and Perryborg agree to view each other's histories with the help of Doofenshmirtz's old tech.





	This Is Your (Other) Backstory

**Author's Note:**

> So this is not compliant with anything but the movie & is only about 90% compliant with the movie, because there was so much interesting dark potential in the 2nd dimension but... kid's show. Which I appreciate, but I couldn't help thinking about what exactly had happened, and was going to happen, with alternate Perry; that collided with some thoughts and personal headcanons about Perry's backstory, and you get this. 
> 
> Chose not to use archive warnings because I'm still writing the second half, and this first part is pretty tame setup; the rating may tick up in the second half, and there'll be warnings in the notes for the second part. For now, have some Looming Premonitions Of Disaster.

It was on Perry’s fourth visit to the second dimension, helping some agents drop off equipment OWCA had squeezed into the budget to aid their wounded counterpart, that Dr. Baljeet approached him and said, “He wants to see you.”

Perry blinked at him, then indicated that he didn’t know what ‘he’ meant. He had a couple guesses, and he wasn’t enthusiastic about either of them. 

“Your counterpart here,” Baljeet clarified, glancing down at some papers. He looked so much older than his first dimension counterpart, yet more fragile. Dark circles under his eyes and thin scars on his hands. Everything here was worse for wear. “Perryborg, as many still call him. He has a request.”

There were few things Perry wanted less than to follow Baljeet to the lab, but how could he refuse a request that, essentially, came from himself? Besides, curiosity was still eating at him. He’d only glimpsed Perryborg once since the fight with alternate Doofenshmirtz, in the hospital the first time he’d returned. Without his armor and some of his parts, he was thinner than Perry, tired-looking. Someone had replaced the red glass in his eye with amber, but it did little to make its blank stare more friendly. There were doctors talking at him but Perry could tell from his face—his expression on that face—that he wasn’t listening. He’d glanced over their heads at Perry, and his mouth had tightened, and he’d looked away again. 

Perry had felt a lot of things in that moment—sick, ashamed of himself for that sickness, curious, guilty. Then he’d shoved all that under the rug, because there was work to do. He was beginning to think that method wouldn’t work much longer. 

“He spends most of his time around here,” Baljeet explained as they walked. He kept darting little glances back at Perry. It’s strange to think of what he’s seeing; an enemy general’s face under a hero’s hat. “At first it was… disturbing, to say the least, but I got used to it. He does not want to return to OWCA, and he only visits his family occasionally. Technically we are still debating as to whether to hold him accountable for anything he did during his time as Doofenshmirtz’s general. Initial assessment has not found him a threat, once we removed his built-in weaponry, and whatever programming he was subjected to seems to have been… shaken loose by the electrocution.” Baljeet stopped in front of the lab door and shrugged. “Go figure. I’ll be honest, the stuff Doofenshmirtz put him through is still mostly a mystery, even to me. I didn’t go for the brain science and cyborg modification focus. But…” He shrugged. “He hasn’t tried to kill anyone, hasn’t even asked after Doofenshmirtz. It’s gotten kind of nice having him around, actually. He mostly just hands me things. Well, until a couple days ago. You’ll see.”

He pushed open the door. The lab looked roughly the same as the other times Perry had glimpsed it in passing, except for a machine parked in the middle of the only clear floor space. The body was blobby and appeared to be partially built of TV parts, and two sets of wires snaked from it, leading to two helmets. Wires bristled out at odd angles, and Perryborg crouched by it, fiddling with something on the underside. 

“I got him!” Baljeet exclaimed. From the loud, carefully cheerful way he pitched his voice and how he stood in the doorway until Perryborg looked at them, Perry guessed he’d learned sneaking up on Perryborg—even unintentionally—was a bad idea. “Is the, uh, thing done?”

Perryborg rose to his feet, and seemed to consider the wrench in his hand. He looked a little more healthy than the last time Perry had seen him, which only made the twisted-mirror effect that more disturbing. The dark circles under his eyes were still deeper than Perry’s, and he wore civilian clothes—loose jeans and an old sweatshirt with one arm cut short to free the bulkier metal parts on his arm. His hand whirred softly as he replaced the wrench on a table, and he nodded. 

Perry relaxed, only then realizing how tense he’d been. He still remembered, vividly, the strength of Perryborg’s hand connecting with his face, their fingers laced together as they strained against each other. That tiny, sure smirk on Perryborg’s face that first time he was sure he’d won. 

It’s you, he tried telling himself. It’s just you, with a few differences. There’s no reason to be scared. 

He can’t keep his hand from drifting to his hat, feeling the weight of the tools tucked away in it. A pain in the neck, but reassuring. Perryborg’s eyes flicked toward him, and his hand went up in imitation, a gesture like somebody feeling for a phantom limb. Perry swallowed hard and looked away. 

“So,” Baljeet said, stepping over to the machine, his voice sounding more like his alternate self’s than usual in his attempt to break the silence, “this is a little something that Perryb—that Peregrin and I built from a mixture of the old regime’s tech and some things  _ your  _ Doofenshmirtz left in the lab. Very creative guy, by the way. Out of curiosity, do you have any idea what he would  _ do  _ with a Become-A-Sub-Sandwich-inator?”

Perry couldn’t help rolling his eyes a bit. “He probably got hungry,” he signed. “He thinks of machines for every problem. Use it to turn a lamp post or something.”

Baljeet chuckled nervously. “Right. Low-level threat,” he muttered to himself. A lot of people in the second dimension still struggled with the idea of a Doofenshmirtz that wasn’t quite so… well, evil. He shook off the concern a moment later and managed to move on. “Anyway, Peregrin found these parts and asked for my help in building something, although I will confess he did most of the work—”

Perry blinked. “You did that?” he signed to Perryborg. It wasn’t that he was terrible with machines—he could usually take one apart and put it back in roughly the same shape, if need be—but he couldn’t imagine building something that complex. Whatever it was.

Perryborg wasn’t looking at him, choosing instead to glare at the machine. Baljeet replied for him. “Apparently, he watched the ex-emperor work on his creations, and picked up a lot. Now this—” Baljeet gestured at the machine, “doesn’t exactly have a name, I’m not good with the whole naming thing and Peregrin did not seem interested in naming it either. Put simply, it allows one person to look through their past, or two people to look through each other’s pasts. View them, experience them. It’s about twenty times faster than real time, now that we’ve adjusted it.” Baljeet glared at the machine as well. “Hopefully it will  _ stay  _ that way.”

Perry raised his hands to sign,  _ why did you build this,  _ then drops them. Looking at Perryborg not looking at him, feeling that familiar rush of pity and pain and overwhelming curiosity, he knows. 

Instead, he coughs to get Perryborg’s attention, and signs, “I’ll do it.”

“What Peregrin conveyed to me that he was hoping—” Baljeet blinked and broke off. “Oh, all right, I see you are picking up what he is putting down, as the expression goes. I guess that is to be expected. Well, shall we?”

Perryborg—Perry had tried, unsuccessfully, to try and stop calling him that in his head, but hadn’t come up with an alternative yet—was already sitting down in one of the chairs, lifting the helmet to his head. It looked a bit more complicated than the other one; meant to be hooked up around the edges of the metal plate in Perryborg’s head, Perry realized. He sank into the other chair, looking across the way at his double. 

If nothing else, they at least shared the same need to know. What the other’s life was like with such a different version of the same nemesis, what the world they lived in felt like from the inside. The thought of seeing some of the things he knew had happened to his other self made Perry’s chest tighten in fear, but he didn’t let that show on his face. He removed his hat, carefully setting it in his lap, and placed the other helmet on his head. The visor came down over his eyes, dimming and finally darkening the world. 

In its place, color blossomed in his mind. “Close your eyes,” Baljeet prompted, and Perry obeyed. “Try to relax.” He tried. “We are going to start a little before the main divergence point, all right? Just to ease into it. And, um, if you start seeing or smelling large amounts of smoke, just. Yell or something. I’ve got extinguishers right here. Now…”

Perry could suddenly  _ feel  _ Perryborg sitting across from him; tightly coiled tension, fear and resolution and a strange, strained undercurrent of anger. And behind it all, something quieter and larger, something he couldn’t quite make out before a memory unfolded in his mind like a pop-up book and pulled him in. 

“Gentlemen,” Baljeet’s voice says, fading out, “welcome to your  _ other  _ backstory.”


End file.
